Trail Snipers....

[Critter7r]

Just to recap. I want tech features in the trail. If it's a man-made feature (rock pile, skinny, teeter, elevated causeway, etc) I think there should be a way to not have to ride the feature so that non-experts can ride the trail without being overwhelmed.

[mr_opjones]

mayburry is so fun

When adding in new trail a few years ago, there was a nice big boulder, so they added in a drop and i shaped a camel back jump right after it, hmmmm.

[iamkickstand]

I don't know the trail well enough to know the exact section you speak of, but there is a nice little "double" "camelback" type roller/jump thingy that I had to turn around and hit again, and again, and then I was able to finish my ride the other day


Today I brought my bike to work, and my shorts, and my camelback, and my helmet.....but my shoes are at home

[dirt]

IMBA just posted a picture of some of their dumbed down trails from Rockburn State Park in Maryland. As they said in the caption "Sustainable trails can totally be gnarly and this is proof."

[AllMountin']

That's awesome.... let's do it!

[cramer]

That's awesome.... let's do it!

Looks expensive, but it certainly solves the problem that started this thread- you probably wouldn't have to worry about people removing those rocks from the trai!

[F7Cannon]

IMBA just posted a picture of some of their dumbed down trails from Rockburn State Park in Maryland. As they said in the caption "Sustainable trails can totally be gnarly and this is proof."

Wow. I want to build that! Looks like they are stepping there game up a bit there. Haven't been in quite some time but last time I was I remember it being a very short 4-5 mile family friendly easy non technical trail.

[urbaindk]

Check Rockburn's webpage: http://www.rockburnskillspark.org/
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rockburn ... 5089985929

The group doing this are some old friends of mine. If anyone is interested I have contact info.

A little history: Patapsco Valley St park across the street from Rockburn (a county park) was subject to rogue building for years (I know nothing about this I swear ) Stuff kept getting torn out then rebuilt to the point where relations got worn really thin. We tried for years to get a free ride area put in at Patapsco. The state said F'u and the trail you rode in on. Right about the time I moved here to Michigan members of the local Club MORE started pitching a free ride park to the county. For some reason, while the state was all F'u, the county was like Yee Haw let's do this. In stepped Mel, a stay at home Mom with mad marketing skills and nothing better to do. She took charge of the project, mainly from the fund raising side. She hooked up with local building contractors who donated poop-tons of dirt, logs, and rocks. She also got big donations (of merchandise mostly) from a number of bike companies, which she then sold in raffles to raise even more money. She's also courted numerous individual donors, several of which donated over $10K each. I think she has raised around $500K to date for this project. IMBA Trail Solutions (a trail construction crew run by IMBA) is heavily involved in the actual heavy duty construction and their salaries are covered by the money Mel raised. All the finishing work is done by volunteers.

Point is, if you want something like this in this area, it takes a lot of patience, and persistence. You have to keep asking, if one place says no find somewhere else, and you have to be dedicated to you project from start to finish. I would guess it has taken around 8 years from when the club first started trying to get this done to what you see now.

As the trail liaison for the Stony Creek Skills park, I only wish I had the time and energy to put in the time that Mel has on the fund raising side. We have a lot of potential out there and a good bit of raw materials but if we want to go big, like you see at Rockburn, we need somebody to step up on the business side. (we also need the park's ok, but that's a different matter) I should also point out that Mel is just your run of the mill rider, not a DHer or freerider, she just has a passion for bikes and seeing people have fun. In my opinion she is a very special person.